Getting Ready for Rain and Wind

Your place:

• Storm Coming: Quick Tips On Ways To Prepare 

• One Wet Brooklyn Basement: How He Redirects The Water Coming In

Your community:

• Call for Flooding Stories in Gowanus To Turn Into Public Art

• City Comptroller Lander Studies What NYC Has Done Post-Sandy

Storm Coming: Quick Tips To Prepare

⛔️ Today: Dec 11, 2024: We have a “Flood Watch” in parts of NYC with 1-2 inches of rain expected, high winds, and potential coastal surge (Jamaica Bay).

Keep in mind: 1 inch of rain on a small 20’-50’ roof generates about 620 gallons of water. And when you have high wind like this, it can blow stormwater against exterior walls which can act like a shower curtain and bring more water down.

1) Check and clear drains

• Both front and back of your place: fall leaves or trash may be blocking

• Street drains near you: I know it’s not your job, but would you rather do that, or clean up a flood? And you help your community 😇 

2) Seal bottom part of doors if water might flow under

• Chances are you do NOT have sandbags laying around or snazzy flood bags or barriers (holiday gift idea 🎁)…. Don’t worry, you can do a makeshift sandbag approach using plastic sheeting (like a garbage bag or even a shower curtain) and then something that can press down and keep the plastic in place. Makeshift sandbags can be a trash bags with wet towels or blankets in them.

• TIP: Make them heavy enough to stay in place when water comes up, but don’t over-fill bag, half-filled is best so flexible and can fit snug. See technique below.

3) Sign up for city alerts, especially if you live in a basement apartment

• Everyone should sign up for NYC.gov/NotifyNYC for alerts but there are extra notifications and help for basement apartment dwellers. 13 languages!

4) Lift what you need to protect

• Water may come in anyway. Sewer lines may back up (they can do when storms are over 1.5 inches like this one). So if on your lower level you have important documents in boxes, electronics, art work, power tools, lift them up ⬆️

5) Take video or pictures of flooding you seem and solutions you use

• You should have some video of flooding… for your landlord, your insurance, to show people who will be contractors, AND to help your neighbors.

• Share your flood pictures and videos with US! We want to see what you see and if you have and techniques you are using to control the water (even if it is not working…we want to see it). Email us: [email protected]

• Share pictures only with MyCoast Flood Watch which captures and maps pictures which helps researchers and public officials

And feel free to email The City Sponge and let us know if we can be helpful! 😅 

Your Place

One Wet Brooklyn Basement: How He Redirects The Water

Here is video from a Sponge fan in Brooklyn. He sent me this to show what he did in his basement.

The flooding problem:

After a solution put in place and how it works:

The ballpark cost for this solution he estimates at $5-7K for the following items:

• Concrete work

• Cut slab, excavate, install 5 gallon bucket

• Create concrete pitched trench and curb

• Sum pump

• Pump install (plumbing and electric)

• Cut opening through rear masonry wall for PVC

• Furnish and Install PVC to back corner of yard

• Modifications to backyard fence to conceal pvc, clean up/caulk openings, and other miscellaneous work

» Please share YOUR flood solution with us so we can help other people see what can be done. Even if it’s NOT working (that helps us all learn). Email The City Sponge.

Your Community

Call for Flooding Stories in Gowanus To Turn Into Public Art

Engaging people to work on flooding issues - especially on the sunny days - is important ongoing work.

Brooklyn artist Tiffany Baker is helping with that by collecting stories of how flooding affects people’s lives and turning it into public art. The “Dear Neighbor” project is now gathering interviews from people who live and work around the Gowanus area. Selected ones will be turned into experiential murals, audio recordings, and abstracted portraits that appear in multiple locations around Gowanus from April - June 2025.

This effort is supported by the Van Alen Institute which sponsors an ongoing program of creative community engagement to help Gowanus residents stay informed about issues shaping their neighborhood.

Have a flooding story to share? You can schedule your interview with Tiffany below:

» In person: Click here to schedule a 45 min in-person interview

» Online: Click here to schedule 45 min video interview

» Questions? Email Tiffany at [email protected]

City Comptroller Lander Studies What NYC Has Done Post-Sandy

The short answer is: there is some progress, but not enough given weather predictions.

That’s what NYC Comptroller Brad Lander has found after a late 2024 review where his office looked at a number of specific items, their status, and highlighting specific areas where the city set goals for flooding, took action and what progress has been made.

Summary table below. Green is good. Orange is eeeh to okay. Red is bad. 

Some call outs:

• A lot of Post-Sandy federal money spent, but still some left 10 years later

• Of 1,500 catch basins needing replacement, 48 have been done

• Not enough specialized trucks to clean out city sewer drains

You may have seen some of these major public works projects along our shorelines such as Battery Park, a massive project that includes flooding walls 18 feet above sea level.

And some you may not see directly but still very valuable, like establishing Community Preparedness Networks in at-risk areas or the many sewer upgrades to NYC’s 7,400 miles of sewers (here is the DEP report on recommendations from 2013 right after Sandy).

So it’s fair to say there are a lot of big projects going on.

But even the DEP commissioner admitted at the Rainproof NYC event in 2024 that the DEP and city are not able to retro-fit an old city sewer system fast enough to keep up with the forecasted volume of water. It’s one of the reasons why experts are using the term “live with water” as opposed to “prevent water” from coming in.

Yes Comptroller Lander is running for Mayor against Adams, but he is not wrong when he says: “Extreme rainfall is now a regular part of New York’s climate reality.” And as the Comptroller, he would know what money has been allocated or spent. We should pay attention when he says: “10 years after Hurricane Sandy, a significant portion of federal recovery funds have yet to be spent.”

One callout Lander mentions is the need for special trucks to clean catch-basins (similar to picture below).

After all, sewer upgrades don’t help if trash and leaves block the drains (people see this issue on their blocks and some good people try to fix it).

Relatedly, I have heard a similar idea about the importance of the right types of trucks for NYC resilience.

It was expressed by Walter Meyer, a Stanford Professor and founder of Local Design which is a research-based design firm specializing in resilient and “environmentally-just” landscapes.

Mr. Meyer said that a key component to creating a more resilient NYC is better use of porous pavement….but to do that at scale, you need NEW sanitation trucks, like ones they have in Europe that use vacuuming vs sweeping.

Vacuum trucks are NOT to suck up water but rather to enable the DOT and Sanitation to leverage more porous pavement and maintain its absorption qualities. If NYC Sanitation could actually maintain streets that used porous pavement, My Meyer believes it would unlock a solutions for millions of gallons of flood water..and cleaner air from less dust.

Sometimes it is one thing like that which enables other things that add up to big changes in a big complicated city.

Editors note:

We tried a different format here by dividing the newsletter in two parts:

1) Your Place
2) Your Community

Why? Because answering your flooding questions and finding solutions means looking at both levels: what you can do personally and what the community/city is doing. And in some cases, they are connected, like these:

• how you manage your sewer connections?

• are there any gov’t incentives for flood mitigation work or retro-fits?

• what flooding info is now required by law to share with renters/buyers?

• what your neighbors are doing (or not doing)?

• can we install a green rain garden on our street?

• which insurance requirements and programs are right for you?

• are bigger projects getting funding and follow-through?

After all, the water connects us: neighbors, community and government.

We hope this is helpful. Please share with your neighbors!